Me, I'm hoping that they build up a big expectation in the press that they're going to cure cancer or something. The internet didn't exist when all this "creation science" was around. Now they're leaving a virtual paper trail, and good! I say.

It seems curing cancer is aiming pretty low compared to their obvious objective, which is to use the tools of modern day scientific mimicry to prove the existence of God.

By design, it will keep them in business for an eternity.

Now that's a Deep Thought.

--------------Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.

--------------Given that we are all descended from Adam and Eve...genetic defects as a result of intra-family marriage would not begin to crop up until after the first few dozen generations. - Dr. Hugh Ross

My gosh... this is the chap who the DI moaned about being fired? (which apparently is the same as not getting tenure - hey, I don't make the rules).

He does some research that suggests that by a quirk of mathematics, habitable planets, because of their orbits, are more likely to have the setup for perfect eclipses than uninhabitable ones. This is interesting, and I like it. It's one of those weird mathematical tricks like two people sharing birthdays in a large group.

So he's shown that the fact we have nice eclipses IS NOT SURPRISING OR MAGICAL - in essence, score one for the godless atheist naturalist side.

But then he throws in this utter illogic about eclipses driving scientific discovery. Um, what does that have to do with anything? Archimedes was turned on by bathwater. War has been a highly effective way to advance science. But his whole argument hinges on the suggestion that some intelligence set up the universe and the moon in such an unlikely way as to make science all that much easier for us.

I'm pretty sure I can come up with many, many ways that scientific discovery could be made easier. For one, not having THE DARK AGES. For two, not having people who are trying to bring back THE DARK AGES. For three, how about not having clouds at all, or at least having them move in paths which run around our telescopes? Because I'm one of many people who didn't see the 1999 total solar eclipse BECAUSE OF HUGE CLOUDS. (I went to Cornwall to see it and all).

Like the Explanatory Filter, Gonzales idea relies on being able to go through an infinity of possibilities. In the EF, one has to rule out all natural laws, discovered or not; in the Privileged Planet, one cannot claim that our current position is the best without knowing all possible positions. What if we were in one of those little dwarf galaxies over the Milky Way? The whole Milky Way swirly would fill the sky*. We'd be able to watch stars orbit the central black hole. With an X-ray telescope perhaps we'd detect the streamers and deduce the existence of other quasars easily instead of all that difficult science they had to do.

I suspect Gonzales work is going to be just like Dembski's; sloppy in all the areas where the argument is, rejected by science, but fuel for creationists. Hey, I've already had a creationist give me the eclipse argument.

* Stargate Atlantis shows us what this might be like. Sorry, I just watched the episode with the midway station between the Milky Way and the Pegasus galaxy and it's jawdroppingly pretty.

* Stargate Atlantis shows us what this might be like. Sorry, I just watched the episode with the midway station between the Milky Way and the Pegasus galaxy and it's jawdroppingly pretty.

Off topic I know, but I'd disagree with "jawdroppingly pretty". Half-way to M31, it would be four times the apparent size and have four times the brightness it has from Earth - not big or bright enough to see much spiral structure with the naked eye. The Milky Way would look more or less the same in the opposite direction, and I haven't checked the numbers but the Triangulum spiral would probably be naked-eye as well. And that would be it. Nothing else to see without a telescope.

--------------Math is just a language of reality. Its a waste of time to know it. - Robert Byers

There isn't any probability that the letter d is in the word "mathematics"... Â The correct answer would be "not even 0" - JoeG

Are these circumstances that allow us to observe the best solar eclipses in the Solar System just a lucky coincidence, or do they point to something larger?

1) Guess what just fits in my hand (sorta)?

YOU'RES CAN FIT IN 2 A KITENS' HAND. HOMO.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

Sorry to shock you all, but the Biologic Institute has released its latest piece of research. Or rather Gonzales has written a piece claiming that a new paper shows he was right.

This is the new face of ID/C: Vicarious Research.

They don't, like, do any research of their own, but they sure love pointing out how real scientists are inadvertently doing cutting-edge ID research. They like remoras. Or maybe more like, say, liver flukes.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

I suspect Gonzales work is going to be just like Dembski's; sloppy in all the areas where the argument is, rejected by science, but fuel for creationists. Hey, I've already had a creationist give me the eclipse argument.

edit: italic

Such as in:

Quote

26. Observation of highly complex life and bio/eco system requires a creator. a. The size of the sun and moon, while the ratio to earth is hundreds of times distant from earth they are exactly the same size during most eclipses.

Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now?

No prob. When the moon is too far away from the sun to form exact eclipses, that's when the moon will cease to be Designed.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now?

Yeah, but the moon was designed to be at just the right distance when humans were to be designed. And the earth-moon system was designed to have the earth's rotation be 365.25 days at just the right time to match the calendar!

--------------"Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV

Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now?

Yeah, but the moon was designed to be at just the right distance when humans were to be designed. And the earth-moon system was designed to have the earth's rotation be 365.25 days at just the right time to match the calendar!

I guess that tells us how many days we have. Just calculate when the moon will cease producing total eclipses and you have the day of reckoning.

--------------Any version of ID consistent with all the evidence is indistinguishable from evolution.

Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now?

Yeah, but the moon was designed to be at just the right distance when humans were to be designed. And the earth-moon system was designed to have the earth's rotation be 365.25 days at just the right time to match the calendar!

Could've they have designed a calender in which the months are all the same length, and equal to a integer number of weeks?